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Gardening and farming in rural north Idaho has many joys and some challenges-- Zone 4 climate, plant predators/ visitors up to and including moose; sudden weather extremes (we get maritime weather off the Pacific and continental weather down from Alberta & BC). Specializing in herbs and fragrant plants led first to a keen interest in cooking with herbs, and then to soapmaking. Any one day's work might see fence fixing, pruning, soapmaking, gathering botanicals, oohing at the elk herd parading past.

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April 17, 2016

So we're having the decoy weather: high-70's, low 80's, to be followed I would bet by one last hurrah for snow. Tonight the flat of rosemary pots on the front porch may stay out all night their first night; no worries the elk will climb on the porch for them (like they have done for basil) and I'm still loath to close the windows, though with various hibernators waking up out there this time of year, I think I had better. Bears in the living room = NO. Ditto skunks under open windows.

The Forsythia has been a golden dream this week, and my species tulips; the peonies are erupting and the scilla around back in the shade are in full flower. What a lovely time of year (I keep saying that, but I do get bowled over by the beauty). And the violets! I walked around a corner and the fragrance lifted me back to my childhood, lying in the long grass and sniffing the flowers, Mom's violets.

Down the hill in what is now a shade garden there are some species peonies that I may (against all my own advice) move, as they're in an area where I will be deleting the fence (yay less mowing and weeding).. it's either that or build potato-basket type cages and pin over them until September. As Market is coming up fast, that might be the answer, though I would rather be done with both tasks sooner. I have displays to re-do, a banner to get re-done, tablecloths to choose, and a thousand other details to take care of. I did find a good shipping app, and a notetaking one I can use on my rambles (so the bird pics and the recordings of birdsong don't just get lost), and I marvel at how useful that thing I call a 'phone' is. But that took too long to find and as always, I get antsy sitting at the computer paging through pages of apps. I think of how antsy my parents got with computers and now I get it.

You will too, someday :)

One of my favorite seed catalogs is doing the slow walk into retirement, and I am scuffling to make a list of the things I want one more time; funny how we get attached to people we will never meet. If I can still get them, I'll post about the catalog... wish me luck :)

2
comments:

Will you be selling any of the old fashioned fragrant violets? I have a collection of violas... and not one of them is fragrant. Confederate, different sorarias, Labrador... all quite scentless. I want fragrance, drat it!

I may; I have some blue with a white eye and a deep royal violet (the species) and am working on propagating them, in and around digging the last of the Iris and Dianthus. I'll post if I do. I've pretty much given up any of the non-fragrant ones, because they just don't do it for me.